Strategy and communication: the enabling and constituting contribution of an under-exploited asset

This paper examines the current and potential contribution that communication does and could make to three areas in the field of strategic management: strategy process and practice, resources and organisational growth and environment and context. It does this by first examining, in a brief overview of the strategic management literature, how the contribution of communication is currently seen. Second, it reviews the corporate and public relations literature and presents a different way of articulating its contribution to strategic management. Third it proposes, in an exploratory case study of the Italian company Illy Café, how this different articulation of communication can be exampled. Finally, the importance of this new approach to theory and practice is discussed and avenues for further research proposed.